My therapist tells me I need to start making amends. Instead, I post to Facebook.

Anyone who has been wronged or offended by my past actions is welcome to fight me tomorrow at the Applebee’s on Route 30.

I provide the details. Starting at noon, I will be in the Applebee’s parking lot all day, waiting for willing combatants. There will be no cost. All ages are welcome to attend but to fight you must be 18 plus. Facebook asks if I’d like to add a photo for my event, so I include a picture of me all fucked up and grinning in my Warped Tour t-shirt, two beer bottle caps draped over my eyes like those coins the Greeks used to pay the dead.

The picture is blurry and I look like an asshole, which is good because I am one.

The next morning, I get to Applebees early. There are a few cars here for the lunch special, but otherwise, the place is pretty desolate. I like this Applebee’s. It has history. One time the cook ran naked through the restaurant on a dare and another time my ex-girlfriend turned down my marriage proposal over chicken wings.

Besides my fists, the only item I’ve brought is a bag of essentials. Gatorade. Ice packs. Bandaids. Gauze. I want to be prepared in case one of my challengers rips a jagged hole in my cheek or punches my kidneys so hard that blood shoots from my pee hole. Considering my current situation– jobless, no savings or healthcare– I can hardly afford an ambulance.

The first guy to show up is my old roommate. When I was drinking heavily, I borrowed his car to run a few errands. Backing out of the driveway, I hit a fence post, a mailbox, and the neighbor’s dog. The dog was fine, barely a scratch, but the car was fucked. I never paid that back. And I skipped out on three months’ rent while he was at the movies. It was his fault for seeing Twilight. One of the sequels, I think.

Now he’s standing before me, looking equal parts pissed off and unsure.

“How’s this work? So what? I just hit you?”

“You can try,” I say, feeling a bit like Morpheus from The Matrix.

“Are you quoting The Matrix?” He asks.

“Just go for it,” I say.

He goes for it. I give him a good pop on the mouth and send him to the curb.

Fists clenched, he lies on the pavement, motionless. When he opens his eyes, I hand him a napkin and he uses it to wipe the blood from his chin. He glares at me and his face is the face of a child who has lost their toy boat down the storm drain. I can tell he thought this would go differently. But that’s not my problem.

“You can’t be mad,” I say. “You lost. That’s the deal.”

“Fine,” he says, crawling to his car. “Fine. Fine. Fine.”

Next up is some tall dude I don’t recognize.

“What’s your deal?” I ask.

The tall dude says I’ve been liking his girlfriend’s photos on Facebook. Holidays. Weekends. All hours of the night. It’s inappropriate, he says. Disrespectful. He’s wanted to confront me for months, but his girlfriend put a stop to it. Apparently, she doesn’t believe in possessive definitions of love.

“So she’s a polygamist?”

“No, she just gets mad when I act jealous.”

“Oh, okay.”

We fight. He hits me and I hit him. We hit each other. I’ve been in dozens of fights in my life, most of them wasted, if not blackout drunk, and getting punched in my newfound sobriety is a fresh experience. It hurts. I mean, really fucking hurts. Like you wouldn’t believe. But it’s also redemptive. I can tell while he’s hitting me, he’s really saying– it’s okay, I forgive you.

After the first few challengers, they arrive in droves. The girl whose uggs I pissed on at a party. The hippie who I sold bad magic mushrooms and then he had diarrhea at the Phish concert. I know most of my opponents, and they’re right to hate me, but when my elementary school teacher pulls up in his old station wagon, I have to say I’m surprised.

“Mr. Richards?” I ask.

“Yes,” he says. And he tells me about the time I wrote a play on JFK’s assassination in second grade. The thing he liked most about the play, he said, was that it didn’t actually have to do with the logistics of the shooting– the convertible or the grassy knoll. Rather, it was a romantic vision of JFK and Jackie O’s last night together, the two of them looking out over the Dallas skyline, discussing their plans for the future.

“You could have gotten out of this town,” Mr. Richard says. “Even at eight years old, you had a vision. You could have been anything.”

“Instead I ended up being me,” I say.

“That’s right,” he says, and karate chops me in the jugular.

Just when I think I can’t take anymore, my ex’s new husband rolls up in his Escalade. He’s some sort of big shot. He works in the city, buying and flipping real estate for cheap. The last time we spoke, I told him that he might be better than me in nearly all facets of existence, but my ex loved me first and that’s something he’ll have to deal with forever.

“Who are you here for?” I ask. “Her or you?”

Her, meaning my ex.

“I think both of us,” he says. “Is that okay?”

“Let’s just get this over with.”

The guy looks like your average square, medium-sized and doughy, but he’s fast like a mongoose. I barely register movement– a blur of tailored suit and quaffed hair– and then I’m entangled in his grip. He’s got me in a rear-naked chokehold, my feet scrabbling at the blacktop.

“Tap out.” He whispers. “Tap out. Tap out.”

“Never,” I grunt.

He cinches his arms tighter and I see the birth of the entire universe.

“Tap out,” he says again. And I tap out. Of course.

Afterward, he cradles me like a newborn, the two of us panting, too exhausted to move.

“Where did you learn to fight?” I ask.

“My work pays for Jujitsu lessons,” he says, then gets in his stupid expensive car and drives away, blasting “Break Stuff” by Limp Bizkit.

It’s almost five o clock now. Happy Hour. The smell of fried tenders and cooking burgers wafts through the dusky air. Inside Applebee’s, the wait staff is switching out the menus and placemats for dinner. The big apple sign glows overhead like a radioactive heart, casting pale arcs of light across everything. I close my eyes and pray for death, thinking– at least mom and dad didn’t show up.

When I open them, there’s a girl in an Applebee’s polo staring down at me. The teenage hostess. I vaguely remember hitting on her back when I was drinking. She must not hold a grudge, because she hands me a water bottle and a cold compress from my first aid bag.

“Why are you doing this?” She asks.

Where to start? I could tell her about the booze and cheating and ripping people off for no reason whatsoever. I could describe what it’s like to wake up in a field or a jail cell or with everyone in your life mad at you. I could say that everything I’ve done, all the good and the bad and the in-between, has only been a temporary relief, a jetty to hold back the wave that’s always crashing down on me. Finally, I say, “I don’t know.”

“Well, whatever. But the night manager is making me call the cops. The daytime guy didn’t care that you were out here but the night guy wants you gone.”

She pulls out her phone and shows it to me.

“Ok-ay,” she says in a sing-song voice. “I’m call-ing the cops now.”

She dials the phone and holds it to her ear. With the last of my strength, I pull my broken, beaten body to its feet and look down the highway to where the sunset is bleeding into the bank of black trees and fluorescent green hills. What’s out there for me? Salvation? Forgiveness? More of the same?

“I’ll give you a ten-second head start,” she says.

That’s all I need.